Happiness is subjective chapter 2
Payback is a ...
3 years later
It was a typical Saturday morning in the Sachs-Priestly household. Miranda had woken up a few minutes earlier. After performing her morning rituals, she had come back to bed and was now reading, or rather criticizing, the latest edition of Elle magazine while admiring her beautiful wife´s delicate snores that she had fought so hard to get used to at the beginning of their relationship but now could not get a good night's sleep without Andy´s adorable sounds close to her.
Miranda decided to let Andy sleep a little longer that day. After all it was just past 9AM and Andy had to be exhausted for several reasons: they had attended a business dinner the night before and when they had arrived home, Andy had dragged Miranda into the shower with her and then made love to her under the hot water. Right after that, Andy had to finish a very important article that was due to be printed in Monday´s newspaper edition, so she had to do a lot of research causing her to come to bed very late.
Andy begun to stir and rolled over to snuggle with Miranda.
"Good morning," Miranda said giving Andy´s face small butterfly kisses as she got rid of the magazine.
"Morning gorgeous," Andy sleepily replied with a smile.
Miranda continued her assault on Andy´s neck until Andy stopped her.
"Do you hear that?" Andy asked raising her head from the pillow.
"Hear what?" Miranda asked with a frown between her eyebrows.
"The sound of silence," Andy said and threw the covers aside revealing her perfect naked body; she was ready to leave the bed when Miranda held her back by the arm.
"It's too early Andrea, come back here." Miranda flashed the famous devilish smile that Andy could never resist.
Andy didn't fight back, she laid on the bed pulling the sheets back up to cover her body and brought Miranda's mouth to meet hers half way in a searing kiss.
After a few minutes, Andy pulled back. "Ok, this is bothering me."
Miranda gave her a glare. "Kissing me is bothering you?" she asked.
"No, of course not." Andy shook her head. "The silence Miranda, your sons are too quiet, this is hardly natural for them."
Miranda couldn't help but grin at her wife´s worried face.
"Andrea, I'm sure they are all right, they are either watching cartoons or already having breakfast with Joanna."
"They are up to something, I'm having this weird feeling and…" Miranda didn't let Andy finish her sentence. She leaned over, bringing their lips together again and Andy gladly opened her mouth to welcome Miranda's warm tongue inside.
"Stop worrying," Miranda said between kisses but as soon as Andy cupped a breast, making Miranda moan from the intimate touch, the door flew open and two small forces of nature came in running before jumping on the bed, causing the two women to break apart.
"Morning mommies," the forces of nature yelled in union.
Maximilian flew directly on Miranda's arms while Mikael jumped onto Andy´s lap.
"Oh my God !" Andy let out as she held Mikael before he could hit her body with full force.
"Morning babies," Miranda greeted her children kissing Maximilian´s forehead. "Did you and your brother have breakfast already?"
"No mommy, we asked Joanna to let us wait for you and mama," Max explained.
"Hey you two, how many times have your mommy and I said that you can't storm into the bedroom without knocking?" Andy asked her twins tickling Mikael´s tummy.
"We forgot," Maximilian said to them and started to giggle.
"Well, practice makes perfect, so let's try this again," Andy said and put Mikael on the ground and nudged Maximilian to climb down as well.
The twins ran back out of the room, closed the door and, a second later, a knock on the door could be heard.
"Who is it?" Andy asked.
"It's us," one of the boys said back.
"Us, who?" Andy asked and Miranda rolled her eyes at the silliness between her wife and children.
"Us. Maximilian and Mikael," Max called out starting to sound impatient from the lack of acknowledgment from his mother.
"You know us mama," this time it was Mikael speaking.
"What do you want?" Andy continued to tease them.
"We want to come in, may we please?," Max put on his most charming voice and Andy could swear he had on his face the perfect puppy-dog eyes that she didn't fall for anymore but Miranda was just too weak for her own good.
"Come on in boys," Miranda decided it was time to end this silly game.
They opened the door again and jumped onto the bed and into their mothers' arms once more.
"Mommy, why couldn't we go with Cass and Caro to uncle Jonathan´s house?" Mikael asked, disappointed.
When they were old enough to have sleepovers at Andy´s friend's houses and fly to visit their grandma Evelyn, the boys started to go to the girls' dad´s house at each opportunity they were allowed to and oddly enough, Miranda's ex husband developed a great relationship with the boys and insisted on having them come along with the girls so they could spend the weekends together, especially now that he was single again and could dedicate more time to his twin daughters and to the boys.
"Because we decided that we wanted to spend some time with you boys since your mama was away for almost a week working," Miranda explained patiently.
"I know, but Uncle Jon had promised to take us to watch the holiday on ice show." Maximilian enlightened their mothers cheerfully.
"We can still go darling," Andy said and ruffed on his dirty-blond hair, "the show starts at 5PM, I just have to type my article that I finished writing last night. Then we will go out to have a late lunch and go to the show, ok?" Andy responded.
"Yay!" Max and Mikael yelled and stood to jump on the bed in their excitement.
"No yelling and no jumping," Miranda warned with a well seeing glare and they stopped immediately.
"Sorry mommy," they said in union and both sat on Andy´s lap and leaned into her embrace trying to hide from their mothers glare.
The four of them had breakfast and spent some time together with the twins talking non-stop about everything they did at Dalton while Andy was away traveling. Afterwards, Miranda went to her studio to take a look at the Book while the boys went to the TV room with Joanna to watch discovery kids channel and Andy went to her office to finish off her article. She was glad that the hard part of handwriting it was over.
Ever since she was young, she was used to organizing her thoughts better if she wrote then down by hand and only after that would she use a computer to write out the final draft. So this morning she only had to type out her article and send it by email to her editor and then simply enjoy the rest of her weekend with her sons and Miranda.
As soon as Andy walked into her office she could feel that something was wrong, she didn't remember having left papers on the sofa and worse, she didn't remember there being crayons all over the place. Andy had been right, the feelings she was having earlier just materialized when she took a few steps closer to the sofa.
"Holy fucking shit," Andy whispered, closing her eyes in denial.
The new leather sofa had crayons stains all over the bright white cushions but that was not the worst part; that was yet to come when Andy took a closer look at what else her angelical twins had drawn on.
Andy started to flip through the papers in her hands. Where she was supposed to read 'White House talks about voting machine hackers' as the headlines of her article, it was now displayed a bright yellow sun with a green garden and on the side, there was a house with some fruit trees right in the middle of her article´s ideas. Andy could feel the blood draining from her body and pool in her cheeks.
She flipped to another page, and there was a drawing that looked like people and another that looked like a dog, and above there was an airplane with what seemed like a head coming out of it.
That was enough. Andy took her article, collected the scattered crayons and left her office.
"Miranda," Andy yelled out as she reached Miranda´s studio on the second floor. "Miranda," she said again storming into the studio.
"Where is the fire Andrea?" Miranda asked pulling her reading glasses off her face. "Didn't we just have a talk with our sons about walking into a room without knocking?" Miranda said coolly but smiled a moment later.
"Look what your sons did to my work?" Andy was fuming as she handed Miranda the ruined pages.
Miranda examined them for a few seconds. "They have to improve their techniques and work on the right profusion of colors and space of course, but I think they have talent if we take in consideration that they are only 3 years old," Miranda looked at her wife again. "The classes they are taking at Dalton are certainly helping their intellectual and creative development, wouldn't you agree?"
Andy looked at Miranda as if she had suddenly grown two heads with blue hair.
"Are you out of your mind? This is not school work Miranda; this is the draft of the article that I spent most of my night on. These are my thoughts organized so that I could write my fucking article today and now I have a sun shinning on them."
"Andrea, I don't think you should reprimand them for expressing their artistic aptitude."
"Oh, then I should let mini Picasso and baby Michelangelo ruin my work and say nothing about it?" Andy didn't wait for Miranda's answer she just took her papers from Miranda´s hands and stormed out of the room.
"Andrea," Miranda called in vain after her. She stood from her seat and went after her angry wife as her boys would for sure need her help.
Andy walked into the TV room and went straight to the TV and turned it off which made the twins immediately whine and pout in disagreement.
"Both of you. Move." Andy pointed to the door and the boys quietly followed their mother´s orders. They knew Andy was the cool and funny mom but when she was angry, she was worse than Mommy. They had a little preview of that when they had the great idea of giving Ollie, their pet hamster, a bath using bath oils in the kitchen sink.
Andy opened her office door and guided her twins inside by their hands and made them sit on the ruined sofa.
"Can you both explain to me what this means?" Andy held up the papers between them.
"This is our drawing mama, didn't you like it?," Mikael asked confused, he was sure this was their best drawing so far, better than the one they did on the wall of the living room some time ago and much better than the painting they did on Patricia´s head.
Miranda had reached Andy´s office as well by now and was quietly watching the scene from the doorway.
"No Mikael, I didn't. How many times have I told you guys that you should not draw on anything that was not paper?" Andy asked, annoyed.
"But this is paper, mama," this time it was Maximilian who explained the obvious to his mother and Miranda let out a chuckle that disappeared fast when Andy gave her the Sachs-Priestly stare.
"This is not merely paper, Max. This is my work that I spent a lot of time on and now you and your brother have ruined it by drawing something on it that I don't even understand," Andy didn't raise her voice but she was clearly angry.
The twins looked at Miranda for some kind of intervention but Andy cut their eye contact.
"Don't look at your mom, she is not going to save you this time."
Mikael looked from the paper on the sofa back to his mother. What was so hard for his mama to understand?
"This is our family, mama. This is mommy, Caro, Cassy, Ollie, Patricia and us and this is you coming home," he pointed to the head out of the airplane.
"We missed you mama and wanted to make something for you," Max said and this time his eyes were filling with tears. He didn't want to make his mother mad.
Andy felt her heart clench in her chest, it seemed she was not immune to her son's puppy-dog eyes after all. She looked over at Miranda who remained quiet but also had a slightest purse on her lips.
Andy knelt down on her knees so she could talk with her sons at eye level.
"I'm sorry Max, I shouldn't have yelled at you guys, but you have to understand that what you did was wrong." She brushed away the single tear that had escaped her son´s eyes, "You have lots of drawing and painting books to play with, not on the sofa, not on Patricia, not on the walls…"
"We don't draw on the walls or paint on Patricia anymore mama. She didn't like it the last time, we only do it on paper now," Mikael said in their defense.
"That is good darling, but especially, you cannot draw or mess with my work papers."
"Sorry mama," both boys said.
"I know," Andy brought them closer to her chest, "but you are grounded, no Holiday on Ice later, and no TV for the rest of the weekend."
They leaned back ready to disagree about their punishment but Andy´s firm glare reminded them the last time they started to whine about a punishment and had to spend a week more without TV.
"Come on boys," Miranda finally let her voice to be heard in the office. "Go find Joanna, she will help you with your showers, Roy will be here soon to take us all out to have lunch," she finished and the boys were released from Andy and rushed by their mother and went straight to their bedroom.
Andy sat on the sofa and let out a sigh that she didn't know she was holding and finally looked up at Miranda.
"Say it Miranda, I know you think I overreacted."
Miranda ignored Andy´s words, "Are you coming with us?"
"No, I have to try to organize this mess again and write my article, my deadline is today."
"Fair enough, we will bring something back for you to eat."
"Thank you," Andy stood from the couch and went to her desk to restart her work.
Miranda nodded and was almost out the door when she turned around. "And yes, Andrea, you overreacted," she said quietly before closing the door, leaving Andy behind to ponder her actions.
xxxxxxx
Around 3:40 pm, Andy had finally finished her article and was sending it to her editor when a small knock broke her concentration.
"C´mon in," Andy said as she clicked SEND and turned to see who was at the door.
Maximilian put his head on the side of the door and flashed his signature smile that could melt the Glaciers of Antarctica. Andy showed a similar smile and he ran into his mother´s arms. He was wearing a black Bermuda shorts and a white polo shirt that Ralph Lauren had sent him and Mikael as a birthday present along with a lot of other clothes. Andy lifted him onto her lap and greeted him with a kiss on his nose.
"How was lunch darling?"
"Great mama, Uncle Jon and my sisters were there, we had lunch together," he informed Andy with a toothy smile.
"Great," Andy smiled back but inside she was not that happy. She didn't like the idea of Miranda and her ex husband having lunch together, especially when she was not there, but she decided not to push that button again with Miranda. At least not for now.
"Are you still mad, mama?" Max asked playing with his fingers that were resting against his mother´s chest.
"I'm not mad baby, I'm just upset about what happened, I worked very hard on that article and had to do it all over again."
He looked into Andy's eyes. "I'm sorry mama, Mika and I only wanted to give you a present. We are sorry."
Andy´s heart melted at her son´s words. They seemed so grown up for their age that sometimes she forgot that they were only 3 year old babies.
"I know baby, I'm sorry too." Andy kissed his forehead. "I love you," she added and hugged him tightly.
"Luvs you too, mama."
A few minutes passed. Andy was checking on her emails while softly caressing his back. She was sure he had fallen asleep but then he leaned back from her shoulder and looked at her.
"Are we still grounded?," he asked putting his small hands on his mother's cheeks and locking his dark blue eyes, which were so like Miranda's, with Andy's brown eyes. "We can go to the show and get the punishment next week mama."
Andy had to fight the urge to laugh out loud at her son´s smart mind. "Yes, you are still grounded Max and no show for you guys."
"Even if we ask mommy?" he tried the last card he had in store that often worked.
"Yes, even if you ask your mommy," Andy said softly but firmly and he got the message. This discussion was over.
Max sighed in defeat and rested his head on his mother´s shoulder once again and in a few minutes he was fast asleep with Andy humming a song for him.
xxxxxxx
A few days later, Miranda was in her office and had just sent Sarah to fetch a steaming hot cup of coffee when she opened the book to the last page she had been looking over the night before and her eyes opened wide. She immediately picked her phone and pressed the number one on it.
"Hi my love, I´ve just finished an interview and will be right there so we can have lunch together," Andy said without waiting for Miranda to greet her.
"Andrea, your sons painted on a sketch of a Gaultier skirt in the Book," Miranda said quietly but deadly.
"Oh..," Andy stopped what she was doing so she could concentrate on not laughing through the phone, "… and what do you suggest that we do about it?"
"Talk to them Andrea. The Book is off limits and after that, I will ground them until they reach puberty."
"I don't know my love," Andy pretended to consider Miranda's words and then continued, "I don't think you should reprimand them for expressing their artistic aptitude." Andy mimicked exactly her wife´s words from a few days ago and then she actually laughed.
Payback was indeed a bitch.
"I hate you Andrea," Miranda murmured.
"Nah, you love me, admit it," Andy said playfully.
"I don't," Miranda said and chuckled but then pursed her lips in full 'Editor in chief of Runway' style, "you know what Andrea, the color they choose could actually have more symmetry with the satin Persian green blouse than the original color."
"Oh my God," Andy said in disbelief and this time Miranda was the one laughing over the phone like she meant it.
Tbc...